(no subject)
Oh I do so love being back at work after a Bank Holiday weekend, particularly one where I just didn't STOP or sit down at all *sighs* NEVER MIND.
It did contain a lot of lovely things though and not just church things either.
The Malcontent @ Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
I don't know how excited I'd have been to see The Malcontent in general but when they announced this opening season and their plan to create the Young Globe Players to mirror the companies of boy actors some of these plays were written for I was VERY excited. I had a slightly rocky time getting to see this play (got the time wrong, rebooked ticket, someone else was sitting in my seat...) however I'm very glad I persisted.
It is REALLY weird watching 12-16 year olds do a play that's quite so full of lust and adultery and all kinds of sex and violence but the thing is this play was WRITTEN for children to perform, and in fact I think slightly younger children if anything, and so watching it gave me a weird sense of dislocation where I was simultaneously enjoying the play and also wondering how it went over at the time/why it was written like this for kids not adults.
The Globe Young Players are of course not all boys but they'd done some crossdressing mixed in- Passarello (a fool) was played by a girl and Maquerelle (a... well basically a bawd/pimp) was played by one of the boys who definitely LOOKED older than 16 and there were several other little switches like that including one boy playing a lady called Emilia that I honestly didn't regiester until I read the programme. I guess if you dress a 12 year old up in a wig and corset and big dress there isn't a whole lot of different TO spot.
There WERE a bunch of jokes about youth and innocence etc. that I guess made sense because of the age of the players but the play isn't a children's play by any stretch of the imagination and whilst the kids did an amazing job I did find myself wondering a little whether it would be better with actual grown up actors? But then I love the way the Globe experiments with this stuff and I WAS surprised by just how good some of them were.
The central character is not an easy part- he's a duke who has been banished and is now hiding in the disguise of a malcontent called Malevole and the boy playing him, Joseph Marshall, was brilliant at the quick changes between the malcontent and the duke though it was very weird hearing some of his more disgusted comments full of loathing of the world and people and everything coming out of the mouth of a child. Similarly Mendoza, the baddy of the piece, was amazing and slimey and every now and then I'd remember he was probably about 13!
Sam Hird, who looked to be the oldest in the cast, played Maquerelle and if he doesn't make it onto the stage at the Globe or elsewhere as an adult I'll be very surprised because he had wonderful comic timing and (at the end Maquerelle is banished "to the suburbs" and his gasp of horror was the funniest thing, the whole theatre collapsed into giggles).
Martha Lily Dean as Aurelia had a difficult part because she's wife to the usurping duke and lover ot Mendoza and it's not a sympathetic character but she was clearly having fun and was very spirited and her ability to out shout the whole cast gossiping around her was pretty impressive.
I think in the end I'd say I was very glad I went and that I'd happily see a Young Globe Players production again if only because it IS challenging to see it and try and imagine other plays (like The Knight of the Burning Pestle- also written for a boys company!) done in a similar way and ALSO because even during the performance you could see them relax and improve (one or two hadn't really learned that you can be still on stage) and the amount of energy in the perfomrances was incredible- and still there right to the end with a very bouncy jig!)
I'll definitely be keeping a tight hold of the programme too to see which/if any names appear in future productions.
And whilst I'm talking about the history of theatre and the way performances have changed and our expectations when seeing a play I guess I should finally write about Red Velvet which also challenged me because although I KNOW 19th century acting and plays were very different I just find it very hard to imagine how it ended up like that (or how we escaped the very mannered style I suppose).
Red Velvet @ Tricycle Theatre
I was really sad I missed this the first time round and SO glad when it came back and in a lot of ways now I'm glad I saw it later because it meant I had seen Adrian Lester play Othello BEFORE I saw Adrian Lester play Ira Aldridge playing Othello... which is a convoluted sentence but a very wonderful thing to have experienced.
The play is fascinating- I sort of knew about Ira Aldridge in a very vague way because he's such a fascinating and important person- 1833 and he's a hugely successful black actor in England and yet when he came to play Othello it all fell apart a bit and the play is so clever because it doesn't try to make Ira a hero or a particularly noble person he's an actor who is incredibly good at what he does and who wants to be recognised for his talent and he's awful to his friends and family but then he's also in an impossible position.
Watching the argument between him and the director, who is one of his oldest friends, was PAINFUL precisely because they were both right- Ira was refusing to compromise when it was needed and was possibly going to ruin his friend but then no friend should ever ask you to compromise who you are. Eugene O’Hare & Adrian Lester were absolutely magnificent.
And watching them rehearse and do scenes from the play was wonderful because you saw this hugely mannered style and you saw exactly why realism- a black man playing Othello- in many ways didn't fit at all and yet and yet... listening to thos real reviews of his performance “an African is no more qualified to play Othello than a huge, fat man is to play Falstaff” it still sort of takes my breath away even though I sort of know that there are people who believe something not a million miles from that today.
Lolita Chakrabarti has written a really clever play because it shows the racism and it shows the struggle but it doesn't preach and it doesn't offer solutions and it's very clear that it was an impossible situation for everyone and yet STILL convinces you to hope that it might work out even whilst you know it won't.
And even the "bad" characters, like Edmund Kean's son Charles played by Oliver Ryan who are clearly racist and hate being usurped you feel some sympathy for because his certain future is being torn away from him and you hate him for what he says and does whilst simultaneously understanding (some of) why he does it.;
And then the last 5 minutes of the play stopped me entirely in my tracks because it had never ONCE occurred to me that if Ira Aldridge had been playing other Shakesperian characters before he was offered Othello, and playing them to great acclaim, how was he doing it when the moment he played Othello it was such a huge problem? And so we watched Adrian Lester “white up” to play Lear and I wondered how anyone ever thought that was a good idea. And then I came home and read all of the myriad debates about white actors getting parts meant for other ethnicities and just... colour blind casting at the moment really really isn't.
Actually the other thing it made me think about a LOT is the tendency for actors to get awards for playing something very other- so cis people playing trans characters, straight actors playing gay, white actors playing another ethnicity etc. because so much of the reaction to Aldridge's Othello seemed to be this huge fear that the monstrous Othello he presented was somehow actually HIM that HE was dangerous and shouldn't be left alone with poor white actresses and that they were really being hurt and we do that don't we? Assume it's more amazing if it's very other and assume it's been easy if an actor is acting a part remotely connected to them (even only by ridiculous sterotype).
The reason I haven't written this review (and why I'm not happy with this one either really) is that it made my thoughts dance about so much and not really rest on any one thing because it was so GOOD and because it touched on all these issues whilst also being incredibly human and I'm so amazed by the play and the actors.
And I'm so glad that Adrian Lester played Othello knowing Ira Aldridge's story as intimately as he clearly does and I don't know why I think that's good but I do.
I need to learn how to structure my reviews better I think, so at least I'm happy with them and don't feel like they're just splurges of words and feelings! I do LOVE talking about theatre though *g*
It did contain a lot of lovely things though and not just church things either.
The Malcontent @ Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
I don't know how excited I'd have been to see The Malcontent in general but when they announced this opening season and their plan to create the Young Globe Players to mirror the companies of boy actors some of these plays were written for I was VERY excited. I had a slightly rocky time getting to see this play (got the time wrong, rebooked ticket, someone else was sitting in my seat...) however I'm very glad I persisted.
It is REALLY weird watching 12-16 year olds do a play that's quite so full of lust and adultery and all kinds of sex and violence but the thing is this play was WRITTEN for children to perform, and in fact I think slightly younger children if anything, and so watching it gave me a weird sense of dislocation where I was simultaneously enjoying the play and also wondering how it went over at the time/why it was written like this for kids not adults.
The Globe Young Players are of course not all boys but they'd done some crossdressing mixed in- Passarello (a fool) was played by a girl and Maquerelle (a... well basically a bawd/pimp) was played by one of the boys who definitely LOOKED older than 16 and there were several other little switches like that including one boy playing a lady called Emilia that I honestly didn't regiester until I read the programme. I guess if you dress a 12 year old up in a wig and corset and big dress there isn't a whole lot of different TO spot.
There WERE a bunch of jokes about youth and innocence etc. that I guess made sense because of the age of the players but the play isn't a children's play by any stretch of the imagination and whilst the kids did an amazing job I did find myself wondering a little whether it would be better with actual grown up actors? But then I love the way the Globe experiments with this stuff and I WAS surprised by just how good some of them were.
The central character is not an easy part- he's a duke who has been banished and is now hiding in the disguise of a malcontent called Malevole and the boy playing him, Joseph Marshall, was brilliant at the quick changes between the malcontent and the duke though it was very weird hearing some of his more disgusted comments full of loathing of the world and people and everything coming out of the mouth of a child. Similarly Mendoza, the baddy of the piece, was amazing and slimey and every now and then I'd remember he was probably about 13!
Sam Hird, who looked to be the oldest in the cast, played Maquerelle and if he doesn't make it onto the stage at the Globe or elsewhere as an adult I'll be very surprised because he had wonderful comic timing and (at the end Maquerelle is banished "to the suburbs" and his gasp of horror was the funniest thing, the whole theatre collapsed into giggles).
Martha Lily Dean as Aurelia had a difficult part because she's wife to the usurping duke and lover ot Mendoza and it's not a sympathetic character but she was clearly having fun and was very spirited and her ability to out shout the whole cast gossiping around her was pretty impressive.
I think in the end I'd say I was very glad I went and that I'd happily see a Young Globe Players production again if only because it IS challenging to see it and try and imagine other plays (like The Knight of the Burning Pestle- also written for a boys company!) done in a similar way and ALSO because even during the performance you could see them relax and improve (one or two hadn't really learned that you can be still on stage) and the amount of energy in the perfomrances was incredible- and still there right to the end with a very bouncy jig!)
I'll definitely be keeping a tight hold of the programme too to see which/if any names appear in future productions.
And whilst I'm talking about the history of theatre and the way performances have changed and our expectations when seeing a play I guess I should finally write about Red Velvet which also challenged me because although I KNOW 19th century acting and plays were very different I just find it very hard to imagine how it ended up like that (or how we escaped the very mannered style I suppose).
Red Velvet @ Tricycle Theatre
I was really sad I missed this the first time round and SO glad when it came back and in a lot of ways now I'm glad I saw it later because it meant I had seen Adrian Lester play Othello BEFORE I saw Adrian Lester play Ira Aldridge playing Othello... which is a convoluted sentence but a very wonderful thing to have experienced.
The play is fascinating- I sort of knew about Ira Aldridge in a very vague way because he's such a fascinating and important person- 1833 and he's a hugely successful black actor in England and yet when he came to play Othello it all fell apart a bit and the play is so clever because it doesn't try to make Ira a hero or a particularly noble person he's an actor who is incredibly good at what he does and who wants to be recognised for his talent and he's awful to his friends and family but then he's also in an impossible position.
Watching the argument between him and the director, who is one of his oldest friends, was PAINFUL precisely because they were both right- Ira was refusing to compromise when it was needed and was possibly going to ruin his friend but then no friend should ever ask you to compromise who you are. Eugene O’Hare & Adrian Lester were absolutely magnificent.
And watching them rehearse and do scenes from the play was wonderful because you saw this hugely mannered style and you saw exactly why realism- a black man playing Othello- in many ways didn't fit at all and yet and yet... listening to thos real reviews of his performance “an African is no more qualified to play Othello than a huge, fat man is to play Falstaff” it still sort of takes my breath away even though I sort of know that there are people who believe something not a million miles from that today.
Lolita Chakrabarti has written a really clever play because it shows the racism and it shows the struggle but it doesn't preach and it doesn't offer solutions and it's very clear that it was an impossible situation for everyone and yet STILL convinces you to hope that it might work out even whilst you know it won't.
And even the "bad" characters, like Edmund Kean's son Charles played by Oliver Ryan who are clearly racist and hate being usurped you feel some sympathy for because his certain future is being torn away from him and you hate him for what he says and does whilst simultaneously understanding (some of) why he does it.;
And then the last 5 minutes of the play stopped me entirely in my tracks because it had never ONCE occurred to me that if Ira Aldridge had been playing other Shakesperian characters before he was offered Othello, and playing them to great acclaim, how was he doing it when the moment he played Othello it was such a huge problem? And so we watched Adrian Lester “white up” to play Lear and I wondered how anyone ever thought that was a good idea. And then I came home and read all of the myriad debates about white actors getting parts meant for other ethnicities and just... colour blind casting at the moment really really isn't.
Actually the other thing it made me think about a LOT is the tendency for actors to get awards for playing something very other- so cis people playing trans characters, straight actors playing gay, white actors playing another ethnicity etc. because so much of the reaction to Aldridge's Othello seemed to be this huge fear that the monstrous Othello he presented was somehow actually HIM that HE was dangerous and shouldn't be left alone with poor white actresses and that they were really being hurt and we do that don't we? Assume it's more amazing if it's very other and assume it's been easy if an actor is acting a part remotely connected to them (even only by ridiculous sterotype).
The reason I haven't written this review (and why I'm not happy with this one either really) is that it made my thoughts dance about so much and not really rest on any one thing because it was so GOOD and because it touched on all these issues whilst also being incredibly human and I'm so amazed by the play and the actors.
And I'm so glad that Adrian Lester played Othello knowing Ira Aldridge's story as intimately as he clearly does and I don't know why I think that's good but I do.
I need to learn how to structure my reviews better I think, so at least I'm happy with them and don't feel like they're just splurges of words and feelings! I do LOVE talking about theatre though *g*